Snapchat teams with musician to produce, release music videos

Snapchat has partnered with musician Josh Legg to produce and release a series of music videos exclusively for the fast-growing mobile app.

Legg, who goes by the name Goldroom, will release four new music videos this week on Snapchat beginning Tuesday and continuing each day until Friday. Unlike traditional music videos, Legg's will be shot in a vertical orientation as opposed to horizontal in an effort to take advantage of how people usually hold smartphones.

"It immediately transforms the conversation into something that's much more intimate and appealing for both side," Legg said of the app in an interview with the New York Times. "Anything they say, they don't have to worry about it going out to the public, and neither do I."

Snapchat was developed in 2011 at Stanford University and spent much of its infancy as a way for users to discretely exchange disappearing pictures and messages.

But more recently the company has seen a wider array of applications, including within Hollywood, where it's being used as both a marketing tool for filmmakers and musicians and an over-the-top delivery system for original content.

Madonnareleased a music video from her album "Rebel Heart" on the album in February, in which she played a sexy bullfighter surrounded by BDSM-inspired dancers in animal horns, and features a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: "Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven."

In January the company partnered with CNN, ESPN, Comedy Central and others to launch a Discover channel. Later that month the company revealed plans to co-produce a scripted superhero series "SnapperHero" with AT&T. Snapchat also developed a mobile series produced by Steven Spielberg and John Goldwyn's daughters, which was recently renewed for a second season.